Why do we allow fueling our energy plants and automobiles with fossil fuels that causes air pollution responsible for 1/5 deaths world wide? [0]
Why do we allow one-time use plastics and synthetic tire rubbers while knowing it causes irreversible microplastics pollution of land and sea?
... looking at you, fossil fuel lobbyists.
[0]: https://www.hsph.harvard.edu/c-change/news/fossil-fuel-air-p...
https://blogs.scientificamerican.com/observations/climate-ch...
The tragedy is obvious, but I think it's an important example as we move forward with other dramatic and potentially disastrous technological changes. What happens if we discover conclusively in 15 years that observing recommendation-algorithm driven social media for more than an hour a day causes dementia? Would we move quickly to ban it, or would we endure a protracted fight with Meta, TikTok et. al. about our "right to scroll" while the damages accrue?
So, at country scale, implementing a carbon tax on any set of countries immediately reduces their competitiveness against tax-free countries. Over time, this difference will lead to wide divergences in outcomes.
Fossil fuels are hydrocarbons - they're made up of carbon and hydrogen (and very little oxygen). https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hydrocarbon
Carbohydrate is C + H + oxygen, and generally refers to biological molecules derived from glucose. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carbohydrate
A viable general replacement for plastic needs to beat plastic on price, weight, durability, sanitation, strength, and so much more.
But we don’t, instead we peel oranges and then sell them in plastic containers at the grocery store.
If we were talking about making hard trade-offs between preservation required to save lives and reducing pollution that would be one thing. Instead we use it to enable greater waste.
Someone is selling peeled oranges? O.o
How long until they sell peeled apples?
This is about more than sanitary wrapping.
The negative known effects of microplastics are emerging. The public are not as aware of the extent to which they are exposed to microplastics daily. Also, we don't actually know the full extent of the damage being done yet, but what we do know so far is that microplastics affect neurological development, fertility, and are known endocrine-disrupters. It will take time to see the full effects of microplastics in our environment, and it's going to get worse before it gets better.
Microplastics are an ugly witness to pollution, but are likely not themselves very harmful.
Other plastics can be directly toxic, such as styrenes.